Chapter 19.—John is Rather
to Be Understood of Our Perfect Likeness with the Trinity in Life
Eternal. Wisdom is Perfected in Happiness.

25. But in respect to that image
indeed, of which it is said, “Let us make man after our image and
likeness,”928928Gen. i. 26 we
believe,—and, after the utmost search we have been able to make,
understand,—that man was made after the image of the Trinity,
because it is not said, After my, or After thy image. And therefore
that place too of the Apostle John must be understood rather
according to this image, when he says, “We shall be like Him, for
we shall see Him as He is;” because he spoke too of Him of whom
he had said, “We are the sons of God.”929929John iii. 2 And the immortality of the flesh
will be perfected in that moment of the resurrection, of which the
Apostle Paul says, “In the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump; and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed.”9309301 Cor. xv. 52 For in that
very twinkling of an eye, before the judgment, the spiritual body
shall rise again in power, in incorruption, in glory, which is now
sown a natural body in weakness, in corruption, in dishonor. But
the image which is renewed in the spirit of the mind in the
knowledge of God, not outwardly, but inwardly, from day to day,
shall be perfected by that sight itself; which then after the
judgment shall be face to face, but now makes progress as through a
glass in an enigma.9319311 Cor. xiii. 12 And we must understand it to be
said on account of this perfection, that “we shall be like Him,
for we shall see Him as He is.” For this gift will be given to us
at that time, when it shall have been said, “Come, ye blessed of
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.”932932Matt. xxv. 34 For then
will the ungodly be taken away, so that he shall not see the glory
of the Lord,933933Isa. xxvi. 10 when those
on the left hand shall go into eternal punishment, while those on
the right go into life eternal.934934Matt. xxv. 46 But “this is eternal life,” as
the Truth tells us; “to know Thee,” He says, “the one true
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”935935John xvii. 3

26. This contemplative wisdom,
which I believe is properly called wisdom as distinct from
knowledge in the sacred writings; but wisdom only of man, which yet
man has not except from Him, by partaking of whom a rational and
intellectual mind can be made truly wise;—this contemplative
wisdom, I say, it is that Cicero commends, in the end of the
dialogue Hortensius, when he says: “While, then, we
consider these things night and day, and sharpen our understanding,
which is the eye of the mind, taking care that it be not ever
dulled, that is, while we live in philosophy; we, I say, in so
doing, have great hope that, if, on the one hand, this sentiment
and wisdom of ours is mortal and perishable, we shall still, when
we have discharged our human offices, have a pleasant setting, and
a not painful extinction, and as it were a rest from life: or if,
on the other, as ancient philosophers thought,—and those, too,
the greatest and far the most celebrated,—we have souls eternal
and divine, then must we needs think, that the more these shall
have always kept in their own proper course, i.e. in reason
and in the desire of inquiry, and the less they shall have mixed
and entangled themselves in the vices and errors of men, the more
easy ascent and return they will have to heaven.” And then he
says, adding this short sentence, and finishing his discourse by
repeating it: “Wherefore, to end my discourse at last, if we wish
either for a tranquil extinction, after living in the pursuit of
these subjects, or if to migrate without delay from this present
home to another in no little measure better, we must bestow all our
labor and care upon these pursuits.” And here I marvel, that a
man of such great ability should promise to men living in
philosophy, which makes man blessed by contemplation of truth, “a
pleasant setting after the discharge of human offices, if this our
sentiment and wisdom is mortal and perishable;” as if that which
we did not love, or rather which we fiercely hated, were then to
die and come to nothing, so that its setting would be pleasant to
us! But indeed he had not learned this from the philosophers, whom
he extols with great praise; but this sentiment is redolent of that
New Academy, wherein it pleased him to doubt of even 198the plainest
things. But from the philosophers that were greatest and far most
celebrated, as he himself confesses, he had learned that souls are
eternal. For souls that are eternal are not unsuitably stirred up
by the exhortation to be found in “their own proper course,”
when the end of this life shall have come, i.e. “in reason
and in the desire of inquiry,” and to mix and entangle themselves
the less in the vices and errors of men, in order that they may
have an easier return to God. But that course which consists in the
love and investigation of truth does not suffice for the wretched,
i.e. for all mortals who have only this kind of reason, and
are without faith in the Mediator; as I have taken pains to prove,
as much as I could, in former books of this work, especially in the
fourth and thirteenth.